Conventional weather forecasting systems provide weather predictions 12 hours to a few days from the present time. If one needs a short-term forecast or a forecast with a fine time scale, the best information available usually is an hourly forecast for the day.
Conventional weather forecasts are average forecasts for the area for which they are generated. Thus, a forecast may be inaccurate for a precise location within this area, and even the present weather displayed for an area may differ from the actual weather for a precise location within this area.
Moreover, conventional weather forecasts are displayed at a time scale that is too coarse to allow a user to know when a weather event takes place in a precise location and time. Even for hourly conventional weather forecasts, it is impossible for the user to know if the forecasted weather event will last one hour or one minute and, for the latter, at what time it will take place exactly within the hour.
For a user who stays at the same place during a part of a day, conventional weather forecasts may provide a reliable weather forecast. However, for a moving user, conventional weather forecasts that are communicated to the public lack the necessary temporal and spatial resolution to provide the moving user with a reliable weather forecast along the itinerary of the user. Furthermore, no conventional weather forecasts or itinerary planning tools estimate the delays caused by weather on a route, although there is a need for tools comprising that function.
Therefore, there is a need in the market for the generation and display of short-term weather forecasts for various locations and times, and there is further a need in the market for a system and method which allow for estimating the weather along the route between the departure location and the destination location so that the user may attempt to take alternative routes to avoid extreme weather conditions.